Washington, Nov. 20.
The more the magnitude and farveaching possibilities of the recent political overturn are considered, the more clearly is the upheaval seen to be one of the most remarkable in American history. The disappearance, as if in a transformation scene, of the 7,000,000 majority by which President Harding carried the country only two years ago; the reduction almost to the vanishing point of the Republican majority of 165 in the House of Representatives, and the relegation to private life of a group of senators who have for some years constituted no unimportant part of the bulwark against the revolutionary influences that are abroad are not merely one of those swings of the political pendulum that occur with more or less fre—queney in every: constitutionally governed country. They are not mere manifestations of popular dissatisfaction with the party in power. Not entirely non-political, they are mainly the net product of certain social and economic forces, some of them constructive, but not a few of them quite the reverse.. Seca That the result of the election is variously hailed as a Democratic victory, a Labour victory, a Radical victory, and an anti - prohibition victory only partially indicates the conflicting impulses with which the voters went to the poll. The Democrats, naturally enough, claim the victory as their own, when a State (New York) that gave Mr. Harding a majority of over 1,000,000 elects a Democratic senator by a majority of 282,000, and a Democratic governor by 401,000, another State (Michigan), that Mr. Harding carried by 529,000, electing a Democratic senator for the first time in 70 years, and a third (New Jersey) substituting a Democratic majority of 88,000 for a Republican majority of 353,000. Nor are these all. Maryland, Delaware, Indiana, West Virginia and Washington have likewise elected Democratic senators in place of Republicans, the only senatorships lost by the Democrats being in Ohio and Nebraska, where Mr. Pomerene and Mr. Hitchcock were defeated, the latter by the German vote. In the House of Representatives the Democrats won 80 seats. Surely they have a right to call the result of the election a © Democratic victory.
But union Labour also claims the victory as.its own. However scrupulously just a President may endeavour to be in his efforts to compose the differences between capital and labour in the case of a strike (such as the recent coal and railroad strikes) he is almost sure to incur the hostility of Labour, and the recent election was a-case in point. Never before has union Labour voted so nearly as a unit. Every candidate for election to either House of Congress was asked, among other questions, if he would vote and work. against the passage of compulsory labour laws and against compulsory arbitration and all attempts. to destroy or restrict the rights of Labour to organize, bargain collectively and strike. He was also asked if he would work and vote for a clean-cut Federal statute prohibiting Federal judges from issuing injunctions in industrial disputes. Every candidate who evaded or gave an unfavourable answer to these questions paid the penalty, and in view of the strength of the Labour vote, the boast of the Labiur leaders that Labour won the election may prove to be well-founded. Like other people, however, members of Congress do not always keep promises exacted from them at the point of a pistol, er for that matter, even promises made voluntarily, and inasmuch as capital has still some little influence, we might not see any drastic legislation were it not for the profane hands threatened to be laid upon the Ark of the Covenant a group of western Radicalg who have just ousted a corresponding} number of more conservative senators.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.